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Young Henry, who was rising to man’s estate, began to display his character, and aspire to independence: brave, ambitious, liberal, munificent, affable: he discovered qualities which give great lustre to youth; prognosticate a shining fortune; but, unless tempered in mature age with discretion, are the forerunners of the greatest calamities. It is said that at the time when this prince received the holy unction, his father, in order to give greater dignity to the ceremony, officiated at table as one of the retinue; and observed to his son that never king was more royally served. “It is nothing extraordinary,” said young Henry to one of his courtiers, “if the son of a count should serve the son of a king.” This saying, which might pass only for an innocent pleasantry, or even for an oblique compliment to his father, was, however, regarded as a symptom of his aspiring temper; and his conduct soon after justified the conjecture.

1173.

Henry, agreeable to the promise which he had given both to the pope and French king, permitted his son to be crowned anew by the hands of the archbishop of Rouen, and associated the Princess Margaret, spouse to young Henry, in the ceremony.[*] He afterwards allowed him to pay a visit to his father-in-law at Paris, who took the opportunity of instilling into the young prince those ambitious sentiments to which he was naturally but too much inclined.

     [* Hoveden, p. 529. Diceto, p. 560. Brompton, p.
     1080. Gervase, p. 1421. Trivet, p. 58. It appears from
     Madox’s History of the Exchequer, that silk garments were
     then known in England, and that the coronation robes of the
     young king and queen cost eighty-seven pounds ten shillings
     and fourpence, money of that age.]

Though it had been the constant practice of France, ever since the accession of the Capetian line, to crown the son during the lifetime of the father without conferring on him any present participation of royalty; Lewis persuaded his son-in-law, that, by this ceremony, which in those ages was deemed so important, he had acquired a title to sovereignty, and that the king could not, without injustice, exclude him from immediate possession of the whole, or at least a part of his dominions. In consequence of these extravagant ideas, young Henry, on his return, desired the king to resign to him either the crown of England or the duchy of Normandy; discovered great discontent on the refusal; spake in the most undutiful terms of his father; and soon after, in concert with Lewis, made his escape to Paris, where he was protected and supported by that monarch.

While Henry was alarmed at this incident, and had the prospect of dangerous intrigues, or even of a war, which, whether successful or not, must be extremely calamitous and disagreeable to him, he received intelligence of new misfortunes, which must have affected him in the most sensible manner. Queen Eleanor, who had disgusted her first husband by her gallantries, was no less offensive to her second by her jealousy; and after this manner carried to extremity, in the different periods of her life, every circumstance of female weakness. She communicated her discontents against Henry to her two younger sons, Geoffrey and Richard; persuaded them that they were also entitled to present possession of the territories assigned to them; engaged them to fly secretly to the court of France; and was meditating herself an escape to the same court, and had even put on man’s apparel for that purpose, when she was seized by orders from her husband, and thrown into confinement. Thus Europe saw with astonishment the best and most indulgent of parents at war with his whole family; three boys, scarcely arrived at the age of puberty, require a great monarch, in the full vigor of his age and height of his reputation, to dethrone himself in their favor; and several princes not ashamed to support them in these unnatural and absurd pretensions.

Henry, reduced to this perilous and disagreeable situation, had recourse to the court of Rome. Though sensible of the danger attending the interposition of ecclesiastical authority in temporal disputes, he applied to the pope, as his superior lord, to excommunicate his enemies, and by these censures to reduce to obedience his undutiful children, whom he found such reluctance to punish by the sword of the magistrate.[*] Alexander, well pleased to exert his power in so justifiable a cause, issued the bulls required of him; but it was soon found, that these spiritual weapons had not the same force as when employed in a spiritual controversy; and that the clergy were very negligent in supporting a sentence which was nowise calculated to promote the immediate interests of their order. The king, after taking in vain this humiliating step, was obliged to have recourse to arms, and to enlist such auxiliaries as are the usual resource of tyrants, and have seldom been employed by so wise and just a monarch.

The loose government which prevailed in all the states of Europe, the many private wars carried on among the neighboring nobles, and the impossibility of enforcing any general execution of the laws, had encouraged a tribe of banditti to disturb every where the public peace, to infest the highways, to pillage the open country, and to brave all the efforts of the civil magistrate, and even the excommunications of the church, which were fulminated against them. Troops of them were sometimes enlisted in the service of one prince or baron, sometimes in that of another: they often acted in an independent manner, under leaders of their own; the peaceable and industrious inhabitants, reduced to poverty by their ravages, were frequently obliged for subsistence to betake themselves to a like disorderly course of life; and a continual intestine war, pernicious to industry, as well as to the execution of justice, was thus carried on in the bowels of every kingdom. Those desperate ruffians received the name sometimes of Brabanons, sometimes of Routiers or Cottereaux; but for what reason is not agreed by historians; and they formed a kind of society or government among themselves, which set at defiance the rest of mankind. The greatest monarchs were not ashamed, on occasion, to have recourse to their assistance; and as their habits of war and depredation had given them experience, hardiness, and courage, they generally composed the most formidable part of those armies which decided the political quarrels of princes. Several of them were enlisted among the forces levied by Henry’s enemies; but the great treasures amassed by that prince enabled him to engage more numerous troops of them in his service; and the situation of his affairs rendered even such banditti the only forces on whose fidelity he could repose any confidence.

     [* Epist. Petri Bles. epist. 136, in Biblioth.
     Patr. tom. xxiv. p. 1048. His words are, “Vestrae
     jurisdictionis est regnum Angli, et quantum ad feudatorii
     juris obligationem, vobis duntaxat obnoxius teneor.” The
     same strange paper is in Rymer, vol. i. p. 35, and Trivet,
     vol. i. p. 62.]

His licentious barons, disgusted with a vigilant government, were more desirous of being ruled by young princes, ignorant of public affairs, remiss in their conduct, and profuse in their grants; and as the king had insured to his sons the succession to every particular province of his dominions, the nobles dreaded no danger in adhering to those who, they knew, must some time become their sovereigns. Prompted by these motives, many of the Norman nobility had deserted to his son Henry; the Breton and Gascon barons seemed equally disposed to embrace the quarrel of Geoffrey and Richard. Disaffection had crept in among the English; and the earls of Leicester and Chester in particular had openly declared against the king. Twenty thousand Brabanons, therefore, joined to some troops which he brought over from Ireland, and a few barons of approved fidelity, formed the sole force with which he intended to resist his enemies.